Marco Rubio brings up Donald Trump’s Polish history, noting undocumented Polish immigrants helped build signature Trump Tower
BY GINGER ADAMS OTIS, DENIS SLATTERY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, February 26, 2016, 11:15 PM
HUGHES, JAMES, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
According to experts, there's no doubt that Trump relied on about 150 Polish immigrants to build Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Now he wants a wall — but 30 years ago, Donald Trump didn’t worry about having illegal immigrants build his signature tower on Fifth Ave.
Confronted about his checkered past by GOP presidential rival Marco Rubio, Trump dismissed it as ancient history.
“He brings up something from 30 years ago,” Trump whined. “It worked out very well. Everybody was happy.”
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TURNBULL, BILLA supervisor who worked on Trump Tower told NBC that Polish workers earned $5 an hour for their work, which lacked basic safety equipment like hardhats and gloves — but they went without pay for weeks at a time.
But Trump was sued by a labor union in 1983 for hiring illegal Polish workers. Some 200 had poor working conditions and were owed back pay.
The union wanted about $1 million in pension funds it said The Donald dodged by hiring the laborers. Trump denied knowing the workers illegal status. The case was settled in 1999 and the court records sealed.
“It’s constructed on the blood, sweat and tears of the Polish Brigade, as they were known in the industry,” attorney Wendy Sloan told NBC News. Her interview with the network aired as part of a report Friday on “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.”
NBC found Kazimierz (Mike) Sosnowski, a supervisor on the job who had a green card. He said the off-the-books workers went without basic safety equipment like hardhats and gloves.
Trump settled the 1983 lawsuit in 1999, and the court records were sealed. Asked earlier in the campaign about the workers, he blamed it on a "bad contractor."
Meanwhile, the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City emerged from bankruptcy Friday and was taken over by Trump’s billionaire buddy Carl Icahn.
Donald Trump's company, Trump Equitable, was not found to be responsible for not paying Polish immigrants who built his namesake tower.
The pleasure palace will keep the Trump name, but the candidate will lose the 10% stake he had in the business.
Icahn has been keeping the casino afloat since it filed for bankruptcy in Sept. 2014.
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